“By our stumbling the world is perfected”  ― Sri Aurobindo

WHAT IS INTEGRAL?

This field is relatively new and there is still disagreement about what the necessary and sufficient conditions of Integral are.

In the spirit of creating a point of departure for collaborative inquiry, I propose the following 12 conditions of embodiment of Integral consciousness (which I contrast to mere thinking about Integral).

What follows is based on the ways that I have been delusional and prematurely assumed that I was Integral (and perhaps still am not?)  I offer them here with the hope that they can help you avoid some of the delusions which I have perpetrated.  

Accurate sober grounded self-assessment is a crucial foundation if you want to actually grow and develop (and not just imagine that you have - as I frequently witness).

If you are an embodiment of Integral consciousness then:

1.   You live vividly in the experience of your body.  A lot of people think that having certain beliefs makes them Integral.  Alas, it's not that easy.  To be Integral we have to learn to live in our bodies such that we enact our self and the world differently than is taught in mainstream culture.  When Integral is actually embodied it makes a tangible difference.  Our nervous systems are more organized and more coherent.  Our relationship with our emotions is healthier and more functional.  Our mental presence is sharper, clearer, and more lucid.  And our perception is more refreshing and dynamic such that the world we are invoking moment-by-moment feels - and is - alive.

2.  You do your best to embrace all varieties of emotional energy and somatic experience.  Harmony with one's own energy is an essential aspect of integral embodiment.  The extent to which you are at war with yourself is exactly the extent to which you struggle, suffer and fight with the apparently external world.  This doesn't mean that everything is easy if you have brought your inner energies into a relative harmony.  But if you have, then you will generally be able to meet challenges and difficulties in the world with relative grace, kindness and, when appropriate, fierce love.

3.  You feel naked heart energy mixed into the stream of your moment to moment experience.  If this energy is alive and flowing in you then it will slowly erode your culturally conditioned numbness (which we all have to some extent) and you will find yourself slowly becoming more human in the positive sense of the word.  

In Western culture most of us are numb to many things without being aware of how numb we are.  One example is the massive sense of entitlement most human animals feel in relation to the lives and habitats of other animals.  If we had just come to earth for the first time (that is - if we had no motive to justify our complicit past) then we would be appalled by what human animals do to non-human animals.  This is only possible because we don't feel what we are doing.  And of course it is not just to animals.  It is also to other humans.  And to the earth in general.

As Integral embodiment deepens, heart energy streams into the river of our experience and erodes our numbness.  Slowly we start to feel what we are doing.  Slowly we become willing to see how we are complicit to widespread abuse with our diet and lifestyle.  Slowly we become less easily seduced by the justifications offered to us by others and/or our own slippery ego that doesn't actually care (although it of course pretends to).  Prior to actually embodying Integral, we are able to deceive ourselves that we care - without inconveniencing ourselves with actual behavioral changes.

(This ancient perspective, as strange as it may sound, is consistent with modern science and the psychology of perception which says that we do not experience the world directly, but rather that the world we experience is actually a reconstruction based on information transmitted through our optic, auditory, and other sensory nerves.)

So in one important sense, what is most real is Now.  And yet, within this Now, your experience of your Self is deeply rooted in the past.  Whether you realize it or not, the complex structure and nature of your experience is actually a reflection of all the archeological layers of human and pre-human history.  You are definitely not just you (in the small limited sense).  

Integral consciousness experiences itself as a continuation of all that has come before.  It feels a deep respect and love for what we have emerged out of: physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually.  Related to this:

5.  You have at least a basic sense of the history of human consciousness.  Without this one really has no basis to locate oneself in the larger stream of human emergence.  When I was young and even more foolish than I am today, I participated in communities in which we all fantasized that we were at the leading edge of the evolution of human consciousness, but most of us (including me) couldn't articulate even a modest understanding of the contributions of Confucius, Socrates, Kant, Aurobindo or other historical giants, never mind put together a grounded argument about what we were supposedly contributing that was new and original.

6.  You have respect for and makes a sincere effort to 'grok' - not just intellectually understand - the deeper teachings of at least one or two of the major religions of the world.  This does not suggest that you should not also be angry about the incredible amount of violence and massive injustices carried out in the name of religion throughout the ages (which, to some extent, is still happening today).

7.  You have respect for and humility in the face of the absolute wonder and brilliance of materialistic science.  None of us could build a steam engine from scratch, or a gas powered car, or a desktop computer from the 1980s, never mind the marvel of a modern cell phone (which is a super computer plus more).  And yet many of us are quick to criticize and minimize modernist science.  And act like we are better than it.  It is absolutely appropriate to use the scientific method to challenge the truth claims of all previous science, and at the same time, it is a profound irony that there are people posting on the Internet (a dizzying achievement of the scientific method) that they don't believe in the scientific method in general.  While there are important critiques of rational empiricism - even with its shortcomings, modernist science is an amazing expression of human intelligence.  

Within the sandbox of understanding how the (apparently) material world works and doesn't work, modernist science is the 800 pound gorilla building spaceships out of the sand and inventing medicines which have saved millions upon millions of lives (while also being very imperfect).  In contrast, most of us are doing the equivalent of sitting in the sand digging small holes, while we eat cookies and go on about how we are smarter and more compassionate than the gorilla.

8.   You are flexible and easy going in relation to interpersonal power and social hierarchy.  This means that you are neither attached, nor averse to (a) being below others, (b) being above others, and/or (c) being beside others, and are able to flow easily between all three.  Many people have something stuck in their psyche that has them only able to shift between one or two of these three gears.  Some people have issues with others respectfully telling them what to do (issue with being below others).  Other people want to avoid responsibility and therefore tend to avoid acting in roles in which they take responsibility for others (issue with being above others).  And some have a damaged capacity to walk beside others in life as true equals - without resorting to posturing to try to either be above or below (issue with being beside others).  To be Integral one can't afford such ego hang-ups that render one inflexible to meet the needs of the moment, whatever those might be.

9.  You make a continual effort to find your own blind spots and fill in the holes in your own development.  

In my case, one aspect of this is to make an effort to diversify the sources of influence on my consciousness so that it is less bias toward white male heterosexuals.

For many people who identify as 'spiritual' this means expanding beyond New Age writers and countercultural thinkers.  If you profess to love Consciousness, but you don't respect the cultural mainstream, then maybe you are just relating to your idea of Consciousness and are not as lucid as you imagine yourself to be?

More generally, if your analytical left brain is strong, work on your creative holistic right brain.  Alternately, if your left-brain based critical thinking is weak, challenge yourself there.  If you are male, stop making lame excuses for yourself about not understanding women - focus and inquire and listen and learn what it's like to be a woman.  If are female, well I imagine that most likely you already understand how to think like a man pretty well - because you need to for safety, and to have any chance of succeeding in the world.  And besides it is what is taught in school.

10.  You are committed to an ongoing process of self authoring.  This means continually seeking out support to audit (reconsider) more and more of the unconscious preconceptions in your consciousness that were absorbed from society before you had the capacity to consciously evaluate and filter what you were assimilating.  

For example, how much sincere effort have I made to see the ways that I am complicit with all of the deeply embedded systemic racism in society today?  Not enough.  And yet I claim to be self authored.  Don't be lazy and delusional like me!

11.  You have a robust capacity to digest criticism and/or hardship in your life.  Mature Integral consciousness is able to relate to difficulties constructively: actively transforming them in one's own direct experience into new nutrients for the soil from which one grows.  Robert Kegan's distinction of giving and receiving "feedback" (projections which may or may not be valid beyond one person's subjective experience) in a deconstructive rather than a (supposedly) constructive way is relevant when determining how to best relate to criticism from others.  As is Rudyard Kipling's admonition: "to trust yourself when all people doubt you, but to make allowance for their doubting too". 

12.  You are aware of your own approach to epistemology.  In other words you are conscious of your philosophical assumptions and methodological biases in evaluating truth claims.  

While epistemology might seem obtuse and unnecessarily intellectual, it is essential to the very distinctions which delineate between more vs. less mature stages of human consciousness.  

Clearly a strictly materialist scientific approach to epistemology is inadequate here.  Equally inadequate is the regressive collapse of subjectivity and objectivity, such as happens when people argue that because they subjectively feel something, it therefore must be true beyond their own experience.

To be Integral we must refuse to collapse the tension between Modernist objective science and the Post Modern value of subjectivity.  Instead we must stand in the fire of being in the incredibly difficult place of holding to both simultaneously, while doing our darnedest to try to forge a higher order integration within ourself.